A Questionable Virtue
by MooseOnARoof
Summary: John Watson had always been a patient man. A study into what patience actually means. Some mild swearing, the misuse of shoes, a vaguely unimpressed John.


**Warnings:** Some mild swearing, the misuse of shoes, a vaguely unimpressed John  
**Summary**: John Watson had always been a patient man. Gen.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything, except this tub of Pringles on my right, on the desk.

* * *

John Watson had always been a patient man.

* * *

.

.

1. "_Patience, n. tolerant and even-tempered perseverance."_

It's after the eighteenth time of helping a drunken Harry up the steps to their home, that John Watson realises this is what he's here for. That his life will forever consist of him dragging his sister from pubs, or removing the bottle of Scotch whisky from behind the false backing in the kitchen cupboard. His father isn't aware that John knows it's there and doesn't even seem to notice that the half filled bottle disappears most nights. John can only assume that his father has lost the thread of how much he has actually drinks on any specific evening, which is sad and disturbing in equal measure.

Harry is lolling wildly back and forth from his shoulder, slipping and wavering even in his firmest grip. The smell of booze is overwhelming. Vodka, John is guessing by the pungent odour, possibly a shot or two of some other spirit. Whatever it is, it stinks. He knows the smell is going to get into his clothes and he is going to have to wash it before his father finds it, because he will no doubt get a lecture about the dangers of booze, ironically enough.

"Harry. Come on. For God's sake, a bit of help here wouldn't go a miss." John fumbles at the door handle, unable to get a grip strong enough as Harry pulls him the wrong way, taking both of them frighteningly close to the top of the concrete stairs. Harry's response to his call for aid is a mere grunt into his shoulder.

_Well it's a better response than I got the last time._ John laughs, nothing hearty or with feeling, just a chortle, and he doesn't understand why he does it. It just escapes without warning and it's pathetic. Just as pathetic as this situation.

He manages to wedge the door open with his foot before attempting to shoulder the rest open with whatever energy he has left, his body obviously not built to drag limp humans up flights of stairs.

He manouevres her onto the couch, placing a bowl on the floor beneath in case she decides to throw up what ever she has consumed.

And as he rips the shirt off his back, he swears this is the last time he will do this. The last time.

He still does it though. Every couple of days, he'll get a call. A crackling call with an echo in the background. A call from a phone booth, with a slurring mess of an older sister on the other line. She'll describe the building opposite and John will know where she is, because it's always one of a handful of places nearby. Sometimes he's impressed that her eyes are open and she's talking to thin air, sometimes he'll find her slumped with little grace with her back to a wall and her skirt hitched up perilously high.

She never remembers the next morning.

* * *

.

.

2. "_Patience, n. the capacity for calmly enduring trying situations."_

It's a through and through. John has seen it several times before. In some ways, they're easier to deal with than embedded bullet wounds. A generally cleaner wound. No need to crack out the instruments of torture to pull the bullet the from its hiding place. The soldiers, on average, tend to scream less.

But it's a bad through and through. The bullet's hit the femoral artery in the thigh, or torn to it shreds for lack of a better description, and the blood loss is substantial enough already to cause grave concern. John's surprised that Thornton's even conscious, never mind grabbing and tugging hard at John's right sleeve.

"Christ almighty."

"I'm your almighty now Rob." John grabs padding from his rucksack, careful in keeping his head low to avoid the whistling hails of gunfire around him. "Now take a deep breath. I'm gonna elevate your leg to try and stop this bleeding alright?" _Try_ being the operative word. He has two gaps to plug, two wounds to ease the bleeding from. It was difficult enough coping with one open wound in this climate, and judging by the red swell creeping up the knees of his camouflaged trousers, his efforts would most likely be in vain. But John wants to be cautiously optimistic, _needs _to be cautiously optimistic, because without that he has nothing to fall back on.

In one smooth, considered movement, he came to rest Thornton's leg on his shoulder, inviting a new stream of scarlet to trickle down the through the sandy, rock strewn ground. With haste he applied pressure to the entry and exit wound, the amount of padding he used excessive, but then again, he thought, so is the bleeding.

"You still with me Rob?" John glances upwards and to his relief finds the young soldier's chest rising and depressing, his eyes open.

"Mmm."

"I'm gonna give you something stronger for the pain." John picks a vial and needle from his bag. A heavy shot of morphine should do for now.

"Good." Thornton writhed, the pain sending his muscles twitching. "I want a roast dinner."

"What?" The padding in John's hands were heavy and stained, the blood now seeping through the material and onto his fingers. He pushes down hard into the pressure point on the groin with his lower arm.

"Chicken. With all the trimmings. Gravy. Yorkshire Puddings." Thornton giggled, the fast acting morphine already riddling the hormones in his brain.

"God, don't mention food."

"Why? Making...you hungry?"

"I'm always hungry on our rations." John peeled back the soiled pads and replaced them with fresh ones. Beneath, he could feel the rapid but thready pulse, the body over compensating for the lack of blood, the heart pumping harder and harder to circulate, like a car running on the vapours. Thornton would go into hypovolaemic shock soon enough, though judging by the pulse he was close, and eventually lose consciousness. For John, this was the worst part of the whole thing, watching the life ebb away, watching it all trickle down the dusty banks, listening to the declarations of love, the wishes and the hopes, the disturbing revelations of a person's past. St Bart's had never trained him for this. And, he supposes, a few years service still doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

Thornton waves his hand limply in the air. He's weaker now, his face paler, his eyes duller. "I'm glad...that you're here."

"And why's that?"

"Because Stewart's...an arsehole."

John laughs, a mixture of nervous energy and amusement, because Thornton's right. Stewart is an arsehole. "I'm not gonna argue with that."

"And I'd rather..." Thornton's breath hitches.

"Rather what?" He could see the younger soldier's eyes sag, the breathing rapid and husky. _Keep him talking, keep him conscious._ "Rob? Keep talking to me."

A bullet sails past John's left shoulder, crunching with force into a chalky, crumbling wall a couple of feet behind them. Thornton doesn't talk back, and nor does he breath back, and John can only curse himself for thinking he would in the first place.

And after the sporadic fire fight around his head ends, John will dust himself off. He'll walk back to the base camp with his camouflaged knees soaked in blood and the lines in his hands filled with gore. He'll not eat his ration of food, no matter how much his stomach protests, and his sleep will be fitful.

And he'll wake up the next morning, eyes dry and hands coarse, knowing that he'll have to do it all over again.

* * *

.

.

_3._"_Patience, n. as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune." _

"Sherlock?"

A pale face peered from behind a scientific set up of glass, colourful liquids and an assortment of bits and bobs.

"My shoes Sherlock. Where are my shoes?" This was the third time in as many months that John's shoes had disappeared into thin air. At first, he thought it could have been an error on Mrs Hudson's part. A couple of those pairs were battered and bruised, maybe she had given them to a charity collection or dragged them down to a shop in a bin liner, but the third pair, his _favourite _pair, were pristine. Not a mark, not a scratch on them. He had kept them in the dark recesses of his wardrobe, saved only for special occasions, mostly funerals and weddings, but more recently for dates.

Sherlock's gaze didn't waver from his experiment. "Your shoes?"

"Yes Sherlock. My shoes. The ones I wear on my feet."

"Maybe Mrs Hudson took them to the charity shop."

John waved his finger. "Don't try and foist the blame onto Mrs Hudson. Those shoes were my best shoes. They were in pristine condition."

Sherlock frowned, his face taking a perplexed look. "No, they were not pristine. The leather on the back of the left shoe just above the heel was cracked, more than likely due to your tendency to distribute your weight more to your left hand side. The heels on both those shoes were worn down on the outer edge, meaning that you apply more pressure to the outside of your feet while walking, which in turn signifies you have high arched feet so you're prone to underpronatation." Sherlock paused and grabbed a pen. "That's bad for your ankles by the way." He skipped around the kitchen table and swiped a slip of paper from the surface. "There was a small indentation on the front of the right shoe, possibly a mark from tripping over something hard and rigid. A stone, hard stairs, something like that. The insoles were reasonably worn but the shoes were quite an age, I'd say five or six years old, so you didn't wear them very often. I'm guessing they were shoes you only wore for certain occasions."

"Sherlock. You said 'didn't'." John leaned onto the chair before him, curling his fingers tightly around the wood in an effort to mask his frustration.

"I did?"

"Past tense." John dropped his head, the taste of defeat bitter on his tongue and heavy on his shoulders. "What the hell have you done with them?"

"Well they worked better than your other ones did."

"My other ones?"

"Your other shoes John." Sherlock began scribbling, a mess of symbols and letters blossomed onto the paper. "The first pair were way too flimsy. They collapsed within several minutes so I naturally threw them away. They were of no use to anyone And where did you get them from, because I would advise getting your money back. They were shoddily made."

John licked his lips. "Can't really get my money back now anyway, can I?"

"Well I can only assume they were pretty cheap. Your other pair faired a little better but were still unsuitable for the task. I gave the heel to Mrs Turner's dog next door. Seemed quite intent on having that as his chew toy."

What is most disturbing John is that he isn't remotely surprised, or even shocked, to find that his shoes have fallen victim to Sherlock's wandering hands, and partly to Mrs Turner's yapping Terrier. His expectations are now so firmly in the realms of bizarre and fantastical that he would have been almost disappointed to find out that Sherlock _wasn't _behind his missing shoes. Still, the blow of discovering his shoes were no longer viable was not dulled by his adjusted expectations. "So where are my other pair? My _good_ pair? Please don't say you've obliterated those as well." John was hopeful that this was the case, stupidly hopeful that is.

"I have one."

"Oh great. That's brilliant. I'll just mix and match in future then."

Sherlock produced a box from beneath the table and poked a slim finger inside. "Here."

John pulled back the flaps of the cardboard box, biting his tongue as he surveyed inside. "It's green."

"Well it's not meant to be. The experiment went wrong. I think it was possibly the type of leather in the shoe or the gloss they used."

"It's a bright green shoe. Sherlock." John waved the grotesquely coloured item. "It's bright green."

"I know. I did that."

"I...well...just..." John could only muster a puff of air before dropping the shoe back into the box.

He pulls a scuffed old pair from underneath the chair in the living room. These will have to suffice for this evening.

* * *

.

.

**"****_Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue."_**

**Ambrose Bierce** -_The Devil's Dictionary_


End file.
